Ocean King Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in Melbourne

Ocean King Chinese Restaurant at Kingsway Visit Update 19/3/2022

I have upgraded my ranking of the restaurant to from 3 stars to 4 stars.

The dining area is still empty when I arrive to order my dinner to takeaway.However, the cash register keeps opening and closing due to non-stop orders to takeaway.

The flavour of the Pi Pa Duck is not that different from the normal roast duck. It oies come with a different sauce, but I am more for the duck instead of the added flavour.

I wonder the management and staff have been changed. They seem to be more friendly than before.

The prices are not as expensive as some comparable restaurants, and tastewise just as good.

Revisited on 20/9/2021

Melbourne is still in lockdown, and there is no dine-in at restaurant. However, takeaway is available.

My wife has been yearning for Jiao Yan Zuo Ko Yu 椒盐左口鱼 or Spicy Salt Flounder, and we order the dish for our dinner - a very good and appropriate choice for a cold and miserable evening.

It is a terrific dish, the flounder / sole is about 30 cm, crumbed, and deep fried with garlic bits. It is not really peppery hot, however, a few small pieces of green chillies can be found.

We thoroughly enjoy it. I even finish the crispy fins, tail and the head.

Revisited on 7/3/2021

I was invited to join a group friends to celebrate a couple of birthdays during the week. The orgainser decided on the set menu. The dishes turned out to rather ordinary.

It could be the restaurant was short of hands and the waitress was rather impatient when serving us. However it was inexcusable, because the restaurant was less than 25% full.

The tanks had several big rock lobsters, but we were not ordering lobster in our lunch.

My wife and I prefer the roast duck sold here than its competitors in Kingsway. The roast pork and char siew are just as good, but we seldom order them because my wife does a good job in roasting them in our own kitchen.

In my review this time, I drop the ranking from 4 stars down to 3 stars. I did not mention about the carpet, which probably had never been steam-clean since it was laid. I hope I see a clean carpet in my next visit. Reviewed on 3/4/2019 4 stars

I have not been to this restaurant quite some time. It is double shop front and can accommodate a banquet party of over 100. There are several tankful of live fish, abalones, and sometimes they stock large crabs and lobsters.

It is a weekday evening, and the restaurant is not full. I am quite let down by the service, just like many other Chinese restaurants; however the quality of the dishes mahes up for the minus. The portion size of all the dishes are neither too big nor too small, enough for eight adults.

Dinner begins with a clear pork-bone soup on the house.

One of our friends asked the waitress to pass on to the chef a message to reduce the use of excessive oil, and the chef does a good job.

The oil is fresh and the deep fried items including the Golden Chicken Ribs and Pipa Tofu are fried to light golden brown.

The yam in Duck with Yam claypot is very starchy and soft, in fact very smooth to the palate.

The pork spare ribs cooked with dark Jenjiang sauce has the right colour and flavour, and the sauce is not too thick and starchy.

The Spicy Egg Plant claypot sauce has a touch of chilly hot, great to mix in with plain rice.

Prawn Cake Slices with Gai Lan complete the lot with green vegetables.

Dinner completes with Red Bean "soup" on the house too.

In addition, the bill has not made a big dent...

Overall experience after had previously been here months before with my late father our guests tonight were all quite shocked with the quality of food served. Not only was it way overpriced it’s also their floor staff lacking customer centric skills and empathy towards us as paying customers after we raised our concerns on the first seafood dish served which was Live Crab cooked with shallots/ginger on a bed of egg noodles. Lacked the very basics such as presentation and food was tasteless. For nearly $200 just this dish alone I nearly fell off my chair! There was no heart put into our cooking looking from afar. Other concerning matter was our other following 4 dishes we had to wait awhile also for Don’t know for what reasons there was delays but we had to instruct the female waiter later to serve out immediately. Everything about this place is full of disappointment and regret nothing positive to take away except WE WONT BE BACK. We chose to dine at this restaurant with my interstate relative tonight because they previously remembered from their past visits the many great dishes that was served here. Not anymore from what I have observed tonight. Invoice: $405 paid in CASH

We are more than happy to pay for quality food/service etc but unfortunately from this awfulness experience we would...

Staffs are extremely unhelpful and rude. Are they hugely underpaid or they are just really not happy about their job?

The food is on average at best. Everytime i order dim sim at lunch, more than half of the chance is they said they are either sold out or not available.

At one occasion, we ended up ordering rice dishes first and i said to one old lady waitress that i would keep the menu and think abt what dim sim to order(since the ones that i wanted to order were not available).

By the time when i decided, and wanted to order, she turned a blind eye and kept ignoring me. I overheard she then said to her colleague that these ppl have already ordered and pretended she didnt see me.

My partner ordered roast duck noodle soup. The waitor served noodle soup and like 20 mins later, they served roast duck...

The nightmare has not finished. When we took the bill to front to pay, the cashier had no smile, no talking, no thank you...no communication at all.

Overall, their customer service is below zero. I was very angry when i walked out of the restaurant and i know that i will...